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>> 177 Notes Introduction 1. “International adoption” is the current popular term used to describe the phenomenon of adoption across national borders. In the 1950s and 1960s, social workers commonly referred to this phenomenon as “intercountry” adoption. Recently, some scholars of international adoption have preferred to use the term “transnational adoption” in order to emphasize the ways that the phenomenon creates a significant social field between two or more specific nation-states. See, for example, Barbara Yngvesson, Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity , and Transnational Adoption (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Eleana Kim, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); Sara K. Dorow, Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship (New York: NYU Press, 2006); and Toby Alice Volkman, ed., Cultures of Transnational Adoption (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). 2. Michelle Knoll and Nicole Muehlhausen, “Local Korean Adoptee Reunited with Birth Mother after 37 Years,” KSTP-TV—Minneapolis and St. Paul, February 6, 2009, available at http://kstp.com/news/stories/S768458.shtml?cat=206 (accessed October 1, 2009). The author Jae Ran Kim writes that “while we do not have exact numbers of how many of us are adopted Koreans, we do know that since the mid-1950s, an estimated 13,000 to 15,000 South Korean children have been adopted to families in Minnesota.” See Jae Ran Kim, “Foreword,” in Kim Jackson and Heewon Lee with Jae Ran Kim, Kim Park Nelson, and Wing Young Huie, Here: A Visual History of Adopted Koreans in Minnesota (St. Paul, Minn.: Yeong & Yeong Book Company, 2010), 10. In her 2010 book Adopted Territory, Eleana Kim notes that “Minnesota is home to more than ten thousand Korean adoptees and has the highest number per capita of adoptees in the nation” (110). And, according to Erika Lee, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Asian American Studies Program, “Minnesota social service agencies were very active in the adoption network through the state’s missionary connections in Asia, and over 10,000 Korean adoptees came to the state. It is estimated that 50 percent or more of the Korean population in Minnesota is adopted.” See Erika Lee, “Asian American Studies in the Midwest: New 178 > 179 Circulation of Children (New York: NYU Press, 2009); Karen Dubinsky, Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas (New York: NYU Press, 2010); and Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Children: The Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012). In the study of the history of Asian international adoption, the exception in the scholarly literature is the emergent critical mass of research on the history of Korean international adoption. In addition to Kim’s Adopted Territory and Hubinette ’s Comforting an Orphaned Nation, see Arissa Oh, “A New Kind of Missionary Work: Christians, Christian Americanists, and the Adoption of Korean GI Babies, 1955–1961,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 33, nos. 3 and 4 (Fall/Winter 2005): 161–188; Catherine Ceniza Choy, “Institutionalizing International Adoption: The Historical Origins of Korean Adoption in the United States,” in International Korean Adoption: A Fifty-Year History of Policy and Practice, ed. Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist, M. Elizabeth Vonk, Dong Soo Kim, and Marvin D. Feit (Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 2007), 25–42; and Eleana Kim, “The Origins of Korean Adoption: Cold War Geopolitics and Intimate Diplomacy,” WP 09-09 (Washington , D.C.: U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS Working Paper Series, 2009), 1–26. Recent dissertations on the history of Korean international adoption include Arissa Hyun Jung Oh, “Into the Arms of America: The Korean Roots of International Adoption” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2008); Susie Woo, “A New American Comes ‘Home’: Race, Nation, and the Immigration of Korean War Adoptees, ‘GI Babies,’ and Brides” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2008); Soojin Pate, “Genealogies of Korean Adoption: American Empire, Militarization, and Yellow Desire,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2010); and Bongsoo Park, “Intimate Encounters, Racial Frontiers: Stateless GI Babies in South Korea and the United States, 1953–1965” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2010). 12. A notable exception is Mike Mullen, “Identity Development of Korean Adoptees ,” in Reviewing Asian America: Locating Diversity, ed. Wendy L. Ng, SooYoung Chin, James S. Moy, and Gary Y. Okihiro (Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1995), 61–74. 13. See, for example, Nam Soon Huh and William J. Reid, “Intercountry, Transracial Adoption and Ethnic Identity: A Korean Example,” International Social Work 43, no. 1 (2000): 75–87; Kevin...